Cleopatra's Sex Appeal, Undershirt Problems & Kobe Bryant

Esquire's Answer Fella believes that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people who don't ask questions, fearing they'll look stupid. So ask Answer Fella anything. If he doesn't know the answer, he'll find out who does, or who has a guess that sounds right.

Who knows? To look at the ancient coins and statuary bearing her image, or to read the descriptions written by near-contemporaries like Plutarch, you might mistake her for Rosie O'Donnell, with a fleshy, somewhat masculine face, big nose, and pinched mouth -- not exactly young Liz Taylor, who played the Egyptian queen onscreen in 1963. But you can't judge a woman's beauty by her image on a coin -- look what the U.S. Mint did to Susan B. Anthony, who was an absolute vixen -- and the prissy Romans had their own ax to grind against Cleo Pee, whom they viewed as the Macedonian skank who poony-whipped Mark Antony and Julius Caesar.

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Whatever she looked like, it's clear from her conquests that the Ptolemaic ruler worked some serious sexual mojo. Power, money, brains, charm --she had all that going for her, plus a gorgeous asp.

If a visible T-shirt under a dress shirt is the male equivalent of a woman's panty lines, how do you prevent it?

Don't wear one. According to Esquire fashion dawg Chris Berend, "As long as you bathe regularly and don't suffer from an unpleasant condition, you shouldn't have to worry about sweat stains. If you insist on wearing the tee, try a low-slung V-neck, or go with a wifebeater, which dips below the visible collar. Just make sure no one sees it: Button up and wear the tie."

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How come, no matter where I'm driving, I see so many people picking their noses? Is there an evolutionary reason why people pick their noses? Is it cross-cultural? A nervous habit? What?

You live in New Jersey, too?

But seriously, Answer Fella's crack research team consulted with a range of experts, a veritable roundtable -- crusty underneath -- of mucus mavens. Joe Turner, an ear, nose, and throat specialist from Pittsburgh, explained, "The nose is very, very sensitive; when things get caught in there, you feel it. People feel something in their noses, it's like an itch -- the natural tendency is to get rid of it. I wish I could be more scientific about it or that I had studies to give you. I don't remember ever reading anything about this."

As for the evolutionary and global implications, Irven DeVore, a Harvard researcher and anthropologist, told AF, "Chimps' noses run. They wipe it off. They pick their noses, but I don't see them doing it very often. Obviously, you can't let your nasal passages get clogged. Keeping a major air passage clear has to have been a fundamental requirement from ancient times, and it is thus not surprising that humans pick goobers.

"Most people in most societies don't carry handkerchiefs. They blow the nose by pressing one nostril with the thumb, then leaning over and blowing hard. They blow the gobbet right on the ground. But everywhere we've been, adults adhere to the same standards of etiquette that we do. People in other cultures also turn away or pick their noses in private. It is not a public activity."

Professor Sidney Mintz of Johns Hopkins University noted, "If primates did not clean their noses, ears, et cetera, that would increase the possibility of infections, but lots of nervous or compulsive behavior among humans is probably not functional."

Which, finally, brings us to Answer Tot, also known as Sir Picks-a-Lot, who, when asked why his forefinger spends so much of the day lodged up at the Nostril Inn, replied, "Because you're a poopyhead."

I heard that Kobe Bryant was named after Kobe beef. True? What the hell is Kobe beef?

It is true that Joe "Jellybean" Bryant, Philly hoopster and Kobe's pop, named his boy after the exceedingly tender steaks from Japan.

Kobe actually refers not to a type of cattle but to a region in Japan; the name of the particular Japanese breed itself is Wagyu. Here's R.L. Freeborn, president of Kobe Beef America, to fill us in on the details:

"Kobe was the main port in Japan, and the U.S. servicepeople who were over there were all stationed around Kobe, and they said, Boy, the best steak I ever had was in Kobe, Japan, so it kind of got to be known as Kobe beef.

"It meant nothing to the Japanese. The Japanese in each prefecture -- which is effectively a state -- have their own line of Wagyu cattle. And in their own prefecture, it's a very guarded animal. They don't move genetics from one prefecture to the next like in America. When we get a really good producing bull, he goes throughout the United States; hell, he'll go throughout the world. We ship embryos to Australia and semen to Australia and South America, places like that. The Japanese, that's not how they do it; every little region had its own genetic base."

How Kobe Bryant's older sister came to be named Vinaigrette is another question altogether.